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Where There's Stress, There's a Story
How our mind works
The mind is an extremely powerful connect-the-dots machine, always making rapid associations between what it notices, triggering any one of millions of memories or projections about the future.
Essentially, the mind is making stories: sequences of events, past or future, where you stand to gain or lose something.
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A silent retreat
Its basic idea is to see how quiet the mind can get when you stop feeding it entertainment, conversation, and daydreams.
It provides the environment for noticing what’s happening inside you and around you, and come back to that when you get distracted.
How our mind works
The mind is an extremely powerful connect-the-dots machine, always making rapid associations between what it notices, triggering any one of millions of memories or projections about the future.
Essentially, the mind is making stories: sequences of events, past or future, where you stand to gain or lose something.
How stress is born
A certain desperation grows around the needs you face in these stories, which creates real stress, usually over nothing. Is it actually useful, or merely addictive, to continually imagine a confrontation with a driver that cut you off on the way to work this morning?
These stories are just a natural by-product of the mind's ability to make connections between similar thoughts, but they generate real stress.
Find the story, leave it unfinished
Every time you experience stress, it’s a response to a narrative in the mind, a story about something you feel you need to have happen or prevent from happening.
When you notice stress rising at some random moment, find the story. Just leave the narrative unfinished and go back to what you were doing before the storytelling started.
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Cravings for sweets things may increase as you start a sugar detox. If you persist, the battle will be won in about a week.
Deprivation tastes better with friends
If you're going to give up sugar, find some friends to detox with you. Keep each other accountable and celebrate healthy choices together.
Strange side effects
Side effects that you might not have considered at first includes a fuzzy head, memory loss, sleep problems and some irritability.
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Integrating journaling in your daily life
The biggest mistake is to journal only in reaction to something that is going on, instead of letting it be part of a system.
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Benefits of a journal
- When you keep a journal, you can look back on important life events to read about how you felt at the time. You may also be able to learn from these past experiences.
- Writing about traumatic events results in physical and psychological health benefits. Journaling focuses on understanding traumatic events and makes people see these events with an extra level of clarity.
Schedule journaling time
Start your daily journal off on the right foot by scheduling your writing for a set time every day.
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Meditation for People Who Don't
One of the good things about social distancing and lockdown is that everyone is trying to come out of this healthier, more grounded, saner, more connected and more empathetic.
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The Most Difficult, Easy Thing
Meditation requires no equipment, can be done indoors, and is extremely beneficial to cultivate calm, balance, focus, and emotional resilience in these times of uncertainty.
It helps us live, work and sleep better. It is an immediate remedy to lessen your anxiety and provide clarity of mind.
Meditation Is an Internal Skill
The main stumbling block for most people is the mastery of the skill of meditation. Meditation cannot be compared to any form of exercise or hobby as it is an internal skill.
Most people get some benefits out of meditation, but it is not transformative. We have to learn it by ourselves, without having images or ideas in our minds, of what it is, how it is done by others and how it would feel.
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